


Based on Proximity

by magikfanfic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Backstory, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Rogue One, potentially an au in which rogue one never would have happened, was meant to be porn but never actually got there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 22:25:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9924935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: There are many futures, Chirrut knows. There is the one that he inhabits where Baze sings, bright as any star in the sky, bright as any sun, to the initiates who wake from nightmares. And there are the futures that are far worse, the ones where the air is inescapably tinged with blood and blaster fire





	

**Author's Note:**

> There are several instances here where the fic was originally going to go one way and then landed somewhere completely else. This is especially evident in the "sex" scenes, which both tend to drift away into introspection. The entire thing, especially the ending, can be indicative of a world that exists without the Empire, a world in which Rogue One wouldn't have happened. It doesn't have to be read that way as it could tie into the backstory of the established universe, but it's open to being either or neither or both. All at the same time. As Chirrut would say, "All is as the Force wills it."
> 
> Things of note that were brought up to me that are not necessarily big enough to put in the tags: Chirrut could be read as dissociative in this and also the relationship between Baze and Chirrut borderlines/can certainly be seen as co-dependent so if those are things you are careful of I just wanted to make mention of them.

Baze sings to the initiates. When they’re hurt or scared, when they have skinned their knees or wake up in the middle of the night crying because of some bad dream, Baze is always the first one to go to them, to comfort. He is so big, he is like a mountain, and it seems like he can scoop all of them up at once into his large arms and hold them, singing softly, singing Jedhan songs that maybe some of the children remember, in the far off shimmery way of memory. That once there was someone else who held them so close in arms warm and enfolding and sang those songs as well. 

Chirrut has a memory of something like that, though it is so old, so faded and pressed at the edges that he cannot recollect anything of substance from it. He is not even sure whether it is an actual memory or just a composite, something created by his mind to comfort him, lull him into a sense of confidence that, once upon a time, there was a family who wanted him very much but something happened and they could no longer be with him. These are details that he will never know, never have. They are not meant for him to have. Everything is as the Force wills it, after all, but that does not mean that the path is easy or that he does not ache for what might have been on another path. 

He knows that Baze has those memories, that his are much closer to the surface, and true. Baze, after all, has told him stories about his parents, his siblings, his childhood home. When they were younger, those memories were something that Chirrut used to ask him to recount often as if he might be able to absorb them and make them his own through the act of listening alone. 

They would sit next to each other, backs against the sun warmed stones of the wall that separated the temple from NiJedha, though the walls were never thick enough to block the sounds, the smells, the energy of the city, sides pressed together in the way of children who have not yet learned about personal space, or body hatred, or been struck in a way that makes them fearful of touch. They were just there, together, huddled as close as they could be, as if their two bodies could blend into one if they just remained like that for long enough. First their bodies and then their minds, and then they would never be alone again, then Chirrut would not need to ask for stories because he would know them all, would know all the memories. They would just melt into each other and share everything. They already did, didn’t they? As far as they were aware. 

“What about your father?” Chirrut asked, and Baze’s answer always started with a combination of a shrug and tilting his face toward the ground. 

“I’ve told you. We had a stand in the marketplace. We sold spices and silks and sometimes perfume. My father had a ship, and he would take long trips out to the stars to bring everything back.”

“Other planets?” Chirrut asked, wide eyed, pressing even closer, turning his head to find Baze’s face. Some of the other boys teased Baze about his looks, about his big ears and the way his smile would stretch slow across his face. That was actually how they had met. Someone teased Baze, and Chirrut kicked them into the dust because you weren’t supposed to be mean to each other. That was one of the first things that the masters had told them. They were meant to be nice to each other. The temple was home, and everyone loved each other at home. Everyone was meant to be kind.

And Baze had just looked at him. In awe. Mouth open and eyes wide, unable to say a word. The ears, which were big, seemed to have gone red at the tips, though Chirrut didn’t know why, wasn’t sure what kind of embarrassment had caused it. He didn’t get much of a chance to ask, either, because Baze turned on his heel shortly after and ran off to his room, to hide under the bed and sing to himself until he thought it was safe to come out again. While he hid there, Chirrut was punished for striking another boy, even though he had a perfectly good reason in his mind. The master had explained that, while his heart had been in the right place, his actions had not been noble. 

Chirrut thought that noble was a strange word with an unsatisfactory meaning, but he took the punishment instead of trying to argue his point with the master. It didn’t matter what the master thought. He had seen the look on the bully’s face when he landed in the dirt, he had seen the way the other initiates, young and old, had looked at him when the kick connected, and no one was going to dare say anything like that again. That was enough for him. Maybe that was the definition of noble that he would be instead. Even if it wasn’t the same one that the masters used. 

The punishment was less than he had expected. When the master had told him that he would have to make amends, he had prepared himself for an arduous journey through the kyber mines to slay a dragon sleeping at the heart of it or the task of finding a tall tree in the desert to cut down and bring back for the temple to erect in the garden. He had never imagined that the punishment might be one as mundane as being forced to wash dishes from the midday meal. It was boring. It was not at all exciting or interesting or dangerous. Chirrut was sure that this punishment did not appropriately fit the crime that he had committed. He had committed an act of violence, after all, so it would only have served that his punishment should require another one or that one be visited upon him.

The only act of violence that occurred in the kitchen was Chirrut smashing his thumb with a heavy, stoneware platter, which didn’t seem nearly enough if he was being honest. There was no one else in the kitchen, he was well and truly alone, left to his own devices. Chirrut Imwe had never liked silence. It seemed heavy and oppressive, a weight sitting on his chest at the best of times, a world that had abandoned him in the dark at the worst. So he started talking to himself as he washed the dishes, to pass the time, to hear a voice. 

“The young Jedi picked his way through the kyber caverns. All around him the walls glowed, pulsing with the brightness of the crystals. He wondered which one was meant for him. There were so many. There were too many. Yet none of them felt right. They all felt like strangers instead of friends. He figured that when you find the shard you are meant to take, it should feel like someone you have known forever. With this in mind, he continued to walk. His torch had given out, but he didn’t need it because the kyber provided more light than anyone could ever need in order to navigate the twisting, windy path down to the heart of the cave. The Jedi froze, hearing something in the darkness, a shuffle, a foot fall. Was there someone with him? Had someone followed him? He wished for the torch back because, though, the kyber lit the way, it did not extend into the shadows of the cave itself, which suddenly seemed to be pressing in on all sides.”

Chirrut trailed off because it didn’t feel like he was alone in the kitchen anymore. The stack of clean plates by his side was quickly accumulating because, once he was occupied with the story, it had become a lot easier to push his way through the task. But now he was just standing there, breathing and listening, trying to determine whether or not he was alone. If it was one of the masters there, he might end up being in more trouble because he was not contemplating his actions and the reason why he had been punished, which Chirrut had no plans to do because he had clearly not been in the wrong in the situation at hand. So, hopefully, it was not one of the masters because Chirrut did not want to be at this task all day. Especially because they were likely going to add silent to any punishments he was given.

“What happened next?” That voice did not belong to any of the masters. It was too young for one thing. But it didn’t belong to any of the initiates that Chirrut knew, either. He wondered, briefly, if it might be the Force talking to him, but that was silly. Also that was not the way the Force normally decided to communicate with him, and surely it had more important things to do, running through the length and breadth of the universe for example, than to approach him in the temple kitchens while he was doing the washing to demand that he continue a completely made up story.

Letting out a breath that he was not completely aware he had been holding, Chirrut glanced over his shoulder and saw the reason he was in the kitchens looking back at him. He would have recognized those ears anywhere. Someone else might have wondered how the boy had managed to find him. The temple was huge, sprawling, its twists and turns and tunnels going under ground as well as spiraling high into the air. Chirrut had spent months mapping it, finding times when he could slip into restricted areas without anyone knowing so that every place in the temple was known to him. Every place but the kyber caves because those were very heavily guarded and no amount of sweet talking the guardians at the gates had ever gained him entrance.

But here was this boy who had been there for hours at best and had already managed to find him. After only seeing him once. It was a miracle of the Force. And Chirrut understood why it had been necessary to strike that other boy, land him on his back in the dirt, even if it might not have been the proper definition of noble. This moment hinged on that one. All was as the Forced willed it even if that was sometimes the most boring explanation for anything in the world.

“Do you want me to?” he asked, turning from the sink, hands covered in soap suds and dripping with rapidly cooling water, covering the floor with tiny beads of moisture that were sure to evaporate quickly in the warmth of the room. Jedha was warm until it wasn’t. It came just like that, a snap, almost as soon as the axis of their moon tilted them away from the sun the warmth left, the winds came, and the entire world changed, suddenly dark and chill and oppressive. Chirrut hated the dark, hated the cold, hated how it kept him awake and gave his mind time to press against everything he didn’t like, running his hands up against it until he smashed through, until it didn’t have power anymore. A long process. Long and tiring. Sleep was far better. Sleep, huddled up warm and safe, but it was harder to reach. Chirrut preferred to fight his demons in the light of day, in the courtyard with his hands and feet, his speed and his training. No one could touch him there. The things in the darkness were all just him, and he had found that it was harder to run away from himself.

The boy with the big ears, the new boy, the one who had fled when Chirrut kicked the other boy in the dirt, kicked that boy into the dirt for him, shuffled a little, seeming shy when asked direct questions, when any attention was paid to him at all. Then he shrugged and stepped closer as though responding to a silent dare or maybe just one that he had laid out for himself. “Yeah. Tell me what happened next.” Then he looked at the stacks of dishes, the water still dripping from Chirrut’s hands, forgotten, onto the floor. “I can help with that. Since it’s my fault. Sort of.”

Sort of. Only sort of. Because the new boy had not asked for anyone to help him. Chirrut had taken it on himself to step in, the way he always did, unable to stand by and listen to that sort of thing, unable to watch it play out in front of him. Normally he simply fought with words. He was better with those than almost any of the other children in the temple. They were easy for him, lifting from his tongue and quirking his mouth. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure whether he controlled the words or if they controlled him, and he didn’t question it too much. Less often he let his fists talk and his feet. Chirrut had long been the best in his age group at fighting, too. He was quick to learn, and he had no hesitation when it came to trying something new, no fear of injuring himself because he was so eager to prove that he could do it.

“Why would you help me? You don’t have to. It’s my punishment. It wasn’t noble to stand up for you by making someone else small.” That was not exactly what the master had said. The master had said it was not noble to stand up for someone by utilizing violence when words would have sufficed, but Chirrut wanted to sound better than that, he wanted to sound smart and smooth. He wanted to impress even if there was nothing very impressive about him at that moment with his robes rolled up above his elbows to avoid soaking them, standing on a small step stool because he was not quite tall enough to reach the sink and the stacks of dishes otherwise. 

The boy shrugged and lowered his head, eyes finding the ground, in something that Chirrut would learn, over time, was a submissive sort of gesture, it was a conciliation that he was wrong, a passing of power. Once he had learned that, Chirrut would spend even more years trying to erase that gesture because the quiet admittance behind it would hurt like a wound to the heart. That day, though, he knew nothing of it and simply regarded it as the other boy taking a moment to think. 

When the new boy finally looked back up at him, his eyes were clear but deep, there was no hint of anything amiss there, no shame, no anger, just a small touch of curiosity, the want for a friend, the desire to repay a debt he felt he owed. “You didn’t have to help me either,” he said, and his words were low and hard to hear, someone used to mumbling to their feet in front of adults probably. Chirrut had met those boys before, the ones who did not lift their head to talk to their elders because it was a sign of disrespect in their houses. The masters were good about washing that away, teaching them that there was more respect and more connection in looking into someone’s eyes, that your voice should match your intentions so make it clear and strong, like the Force, so that the Force might hear you.

The reason made sense. Chirrut wasn’t sure if it was the answer he had been expecting, but it was good. It felt true. Shrugging, he moved over a little on the step stool, cautious to keep his weight balanced so that he would not fall off or tip it over. “Come on then. I’ll tell you the rest of the story while you dry. My hands are already wet.”

The boy seemed to hesitate, as though he had not expected it to work. When Chirrut inclined his head again, motioning for him to join, the boy rushed over and hopped onto the stool. It took all of Chirrut’s training to keep them upright because there was a long, suspended in time moment like a dream when he was positive that they would both topple right off either into the sink or maybe onto the ground. He was still learning about momentum and angles and how they played into the direction that a blow would propel someone. When the stool returned to sitting properly, he sighed and looked at the boy, his eyes wide, accusatory.

The other didn’t even seem to notice that anything had happened. He was just looking at the stacks of dishes and then down at the counter, probably for a clean towel. Chirrut was ashamed in that moment that he had gotten most of them dirty already by trying to fold them into birds the way he and his classmates sometimes did with sheafs of paper. It was an exercise on precision and concentration, but Chirrut just liked the way the paper felt in his hands, the sharp creases, the pattern known and safe. If he made a bird, it would always be a bird. There was nothing else to do. The towels had not been the same. They did not hold the crease, they flopped and fell out of place, retaining none of the majesty of the form. A lot of them were in a haphazard pile on the floor, the result of his irritation having gotten the better of him.

“The second drawer down,” he directed even as he dipped his hands back into the water, which had gone cool and oily by this point. It was an unpleasant sensation, and he frowned, barely managing to force himself not to switch their roles. That would have been small of him. He was attempting noble, even if it had to be his own definition. “What’s your name?”

The boy, frowning, started opening drawers that were not the second one down despite the fact that Chirrut felt like he had been pretty clear in the directions, but he just sighed more to himself than anything and began washing plates again. “Baze Malbus,” the other said when he finally located the proper second drawer down and pulled out a towel. Then he started picking up the plates, drying them efficiently and quickly as though he was used to this kind of task already. That was what drew Chirrut’s eyes to him. Not only did Baze look at ease in the activity, but he didn’t seem bored at all. If anything, he looked content. 

“Baze,” Chirrut repeated. “I like it.” And he did. He couldn’t even say why, but he liked it a lot. It seemed like the sort of name that a Jedi would have. It was strong, and it was bright on his tongue in the same way that the prayers to the Force were. He hummed to himself for a moment, repeating the name in his mind, making a chant out of it for himself. Baze Malbus, Baze Malbus, Baze Malbus. That was the kind of name that you could fold into a paper bird. That was the kind of name that you would write large on the wall of a cave. That was the kind of name you could etch into the stars. 

“Thanks?” Baze said, the question wavering at the edges of the word as though he was not sure how to respond to Chirrut, not quite sure what Chirrut was. That small catch did not send him scuttling out of the kitchen, though. Instead he merely stood his ground, hands working quickly at drying the large stack of dishes, eyes big and bright and clear, ears made to look even larger because of the close cropped hair that they all had. Newly arrived and probably frightened. Newly teased to find that someone would, without even knowing him, knock that person into the dust soundly. That same person who was now standing next to him on a stool, humming and looking very far off. “Are you going to tell me the rest of the story now?” he asked, and those words were enough to bring Chirrut back from where he had drifted, crafting other stories. 

“Oh,” it was a drawn out word, a realization, a coming back to himself to discover that Baze was still there, real and looking at him like he thought maybe Chirrut wasn’t entirely real, which was okay because Chirrut felt a lot like that sometimes. Felt like he was stuck together stardust and broken bits of kyber and desert sand with a windstorm for a heart and pounding rains for a mind. Baze, on the other hand, looked so solid, looked so there, and Chirrut considered reaching out to touch him for a moment, just to confirm the truth behind the thought, but he stopped himself because maybe that desire was what made him less real than other people. 

He was just about to begin again, craft the tale of the Jedi wandering deep into the kyber cave, the raspy hiss of the dragon in the darkness, waiting, lurking, the dragon that was self-doubt and fear and sadness and anger, all those things that were heavy and black and could drag you down into oblivion when Baze spoke up again. “Your name. You didn’t give me your name.”

Chirrut blinked at the phrasing because give instead of tell caught him off guard. As if a name was something one could wrap up and hand over like a present, like a purchase. But he liked it. It seemed more solid. Not just an exchange of words but an exchange of what those words represented as well. “Chirrut Imwe,” he said and then grinned. “Now will you stop interrupting me and let me tell this story?” The only answer he got from Baze was a long sigh, an exhalation that seemed so much older than the boy beside him, and a nod as those hands continued drying the dishes. There was a moment when Chirrut almost got lost watching those hands, but then Baze nudged his shoulder gently, a throwaway motion that could have almost been an accident if not for the slight curve at the corner of his lips. And Chirrut wove the story for the both of them. 

By the time it was done, they had cleaned the entire kitchen.

Chirrut learned, rather quickly, that sleep was not easy for either of them. He had long since become used to getting up in the middle of the night, blanket wrapped around his shoulders to fend off the screaming, always present Jedhan winds, to wander through the halls of the temple until he found a dark corner just for himself. It was a lonely activity, broken only by the occasional steps of the night guardians who wound their slow way through the temple once an hour. Their approach never heralded any sort of danger, never made Chirrut’s heart quicken because they were expected. He knew each and every one of them. Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly lonely, he would sit so that they would see him on their rounds, and they would press fingers to his head as they passed, a greeting, a comforting. None of them stopped, and Chirrut liked to think it was because they remembered being young, knew how the press of night could be hard to take and scary. He trusted that the fact that they passed by, soundless, was an imparting of strength, a nod that he, too, could best those demons of his own in the dark.

He tried not to think too hard about the fact that these were Guardians who chose to walk the halls at night rather than close their eyes during the blackness. Chirrut did not want to think too much on that, linger on what it might mean. So he just watched them, and hoped that their paces, their travels through the night were less because they had never bested sleep and more because they had and now protected everyone else from it.

The first time that Baze followed him out, he was not expecting it. He had curled tight into a nook in the hallway leading to the library, a place where few people went during the day much less at night, and one of the places he went when he most wanted to be alone. The nightmares had been bright and snarling, fire, blaster bolts, the smell of blood sharp in the air. It was a reckless torrent of images and sensations all mixed together, too thick for Chirrut to sift through, too other for him to understand. He didn’t want to talk about it, and he didn’t want to try and slip back to sleep, afraid that he might land right back in the same nightmare. 

Sometimes he told the masters about the dreams but not often because he was concerned that they might tell him the images were from the Force. Chirrut didn’t want to know that. He didn’t want to think of the Force hovering around him at night and feeding that into his brain. It was supposed to be better than that, he thought. He wanted it to be better than that. More than anything, he wanted it to be kind. 

So lodged in those images was he that he didn’t immediately hear the sound of approaching footsteps, the soft shuffle much lighter and younger than those of the night guardians. It wasn’t until there was a voice in the hall that he realized he wasn’t alone. “Chirrut?” 

A voice he had by now come to know quite well. Didn’t they tell each other stories all day long? Chirrut making up one fantastical tale after another, a long line of dreams and wishes and bravery that made their eyes light up and their hearts surge, a never-ending stream of what they wanted the world to be while Baze was always pressed into telling him about things that had been, his family, the spices they sold in the marketplace. Baze always laughed when Chirrut bothered him for those memories, always said that it was strange that they would go from the imaginary to the dreary mundane, but it was the opposite for Chirrut. For him the stories of a life surrounded by family was the fantasy. He had always been spinning his worlds around himself, always been dreaming up ideas that he could never reach, that was his home, and he was sharing it with Baze. It only made sense for Baze to share his own home with him. They both always seemed to be reaching for what they didn’t have.

The sound of his name made Chirrut start, stand up, and peer into the night until he caught sight of Baze there, looking smaller than he ever did in the light of day, sheepish, somewhat guilty look on his face when he realized that his friend had seen him. “Found you,” he said, hanging his head a little before remembering that Chirrut didn’t like the motion and trying to fix it.

Baze had left his bed, had wandered the halls with no blanket, and stood there a few feet away from him, shivering just a touch as the winds blew through the halls from the small windows that had been cut into the stone. As it blew around them, as it gusted from one end of the hall to the other, it sounded like crying, and Chirrut drew the blanket closer to him and gestured with his head for Baze to join him as he settled back onto the ground, tucked completely into the nook, back and side chilled from the stone. When Baze joined him, colder than normal but still hot as far as Chirrut was concerned, he wrapped the blanket about the both of them, tucking it in around Baze’s shoulders.

The other boy made that too old for him sigh, and Chirrut knew he was about to protest so he just leaned his weight into him more fully until he shut up and allowed the gesture. “You okay?” Baze asked. “You’ve been really quiet.”

And it wasn’t until he made the comment that Chirrut realized how true it had been. Their positions seemed to have been reversed, he the one with no words, washed bereft upon a shore of silence while Baze was making all the outward attempts at conversation. He shrugged, and the tinge of blood snaked its way into his nostrils again, unwanted, a terror. “Not really,” he managed after a moment, and his voice shook, wavered. It sounded unreal. It sounded far off and coming apart, being blown to tatters by the wind while he watched, unsure of what to do to stop it. How could he hold himself together when he wasn’t completely sure of who he was, what he was? When he didn’t have a picture in his mind’s eyes, how could he recreate it by himself from the scattered shards?

Baze waited, giving him space and time to say more, to fill the air between them like he normally did, but Chirrut didn’t have the breath for that, didn’t have the mind for that. He just leaned more fully into the warmth and the presence besides him. Part of him thought about asking for one of Baze’s recollections. He liked the ones that lingered on food, on the warmth of their home while Baze’s mother cooked. The way that Baze could describe the scents always made him feel like he was there. But he couldn’t make himself ask. All he could manage at the moment was not crying.

Finally, after a beat, Baze wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer still, and started to sing. Chirrut had heard Baze sing before but only ever to himself. When he got scared or lonely, when he was close to crying, Baze would sing. It was not a lovely sound. It wavered, unsure, cracking at the edges, not perfect or honed but comforting, soothing. The songs that Baze sang Chirrut didn’t know, had never heard before in his life, but somehow they struck at something in his soul, they rang a bell of truth there, feeling more right than any of his stories, than any of Baze’s recollections. The sound of Baze’s voice stumbling, off key, through songs that bore the heavy burden of representing home and family and everything that was no longer within reach. Chirrut just closed his eyes and let the singing fall around him, cover them both as much as the blanket, until that blood scent faded, until his head felt better, until he sighed and nudged Baze with his shoulder, a signal for them to go back to the room, back to bed. 

The years were kind and unkind in turns, the way that life is, the way that the Force is, and Chirrut was not so pleased about that fact, but he could hardly complain about life in general. He had Baze, after all, and there was no friend truer than the initiate with the big ears and the slow smile. No boy better than the one who would put his hands on his knees, settle his forehead against his and sing him home when the Force took him too far, spiraling him out into eddies and waves halfway across the universe without taking a single step.

Most of the stores that Chirrut had spun when they were younger had been left behind, abandoned for more current, pressing things, the studying, the meditation, and the training. They were going to be Guardians, after all, and that meant dedication, that meant perfection. So those old words, those old worlds, the ones that he had crafted like star maps on the temple ceilings when they could not sleep, were left abandoned for other things. Although he still occasionally pestered Baze to tell him about what his family’s stand had been like, what scents hung heavy in the air, what spices he could still bring back, in full color, with his words. And Baze always humored him no matter what else he was supposed to be doing.

There were times, unfortunate moments of doubt, when Chirrut wondered whether Baze’s loyalty was encapsulated in how they had met, whether he was still working on paying down the debt to the boy who had stood up for him from the beginning without asking a single question, without knowing a single thing about him. It was such a fleeting thing, but it burned at him, wormed its way into his heart until he thought he started to see hints of it in their everyday lives, staining the edges of their interactions even though that was the last thing he wanted.

Asking Baze to be his friend, to continue to be his friend, was too much. They were constantly in trouble because of him, because Chirrut couldn’t hold his tongue or he couldn’t hold himself back from deciding to challenge multiple people to spar at once, which was less frowned upon than the methods he used to spur them to do so. Without the weight of him dragging them down, he was sure that Baze, nose to the grindstone, as kind as he looked somber Baze would have shot up through the ranks in grand fashion instead of plodding through the years, one after another, repeating some of the lessons simply because he was tethered to Chirrut.

Chirrut who still didn’t feel entirely real some days and didn’t know how to make that stop. When he looked out at the faces of the other initiates, he wondered if this was an anomaly specific to him or if was an epidemic that no one talked about because just giving voice to it would give it more power. Physical activity, he discovered, was something that would combat it, which was why he spent so much of his time sparring and training, honing his body, being proficient with any weapon he could get his hands on. There he excelled, but even that outlet wasn’t enough, only provided a temporary respite. Somewhere, Chirrut knew, there had to be something that would ground him even more, that would really convince him of his physical, corporeal presence. He just didn’t know where to find it or how to ask. And he hoped that the cost of it wasn’t too high, wasn’t everything that had ever mattered, which sometimes seemed to be what the Force wanted him to give.

Chirrut was wrapping his hands, badly, when the door to their room opened. As older initiates, he and Baze had become roommates rather than living in the communal dorms about two years ago. It had made things easier when it came to their sleepless nights. Instead of having to sneak out to prowl around the grounds and comfort each other, they could now just do the same thing in the safety of their room, whether that was talking each other through meditation, Baze singing until Chirrut’s head was clearer, or just curling up in the same bed because it was warmer. Although saying that he didn’t miss their adventures, their forays into the quiet places in the temple when it was dark and it seemed like they had discovered a world made only for them, would have been a lie.

Baze sighed, that same old man sigh he had been making since the day he arrived at the temple, and dropped to the floor beside Chirrut, his hands reaching for the cloth immediately. “Let me do it,” he said in the prim, fussy voice that Chirrut relentlessly teased him about because it was so maternal.

Normally, Chirrut would have let him, would have sat there and held his hands out, but it had been a long day and even getting into a squabble with two other initiates hadn’t helped. He was frustrated and tense so he pulled his hands back with something approaching a growl. “I can do it. I’m not helpless.”

“No, but you’re doing a terrible job,” Baze commented, but he dropped the strips of cloth and folded his hands in his lap.

Chirrut’s attention had gone back to the task at hand, but he could still feel his friend’s gaze on him, heavy and concerned. It was also a little judgmental about the job that he was currently doing, Chirrut could feel that too. “Force,” he muttered under his breath and then thrust his hands out quickly. “Fine. You do it then.”

Without saying a word, Baze moved closer, hands immediately undoing all the work that Chirrut had accomplished in moments. Chirrut had focused his gaze on the wall not because he was angry with Baze for being right, but because he was mad at himself for not being able to do something so basic, so small. When Baze’s thumbs ran softly, almost hesitantly, across the backs of his hands, he was surprised. Not because Baze was gentle because Baze was always gentle, always kind. Baze was the type who sparred with a sense of caution, always concerned that he was going to hurt someone by accident. That feeling, his overt goodness, radiated off of him like the rays of the sun, illuminating and warming everything that they touched.

No, the fact that the touch was tender was not what made his breath catch; it was how shy the contact seemed to be. Baze who he had tackled to the ground on multiple occasions. Baze who wrapped arms around his shoulders constantly. Baze who had slept in the same bed with him, curled up beside him so that it seemed every inch of skin they possessed pressed together. And now Baze was dragging his thumb over the back of his hand in such a slow, deliberate, vulnerable way that Chirrut had to stop breathing, almost willed his heart to stop beating just so he could focus more fully on it and what it might mean.

“Are you okay?” Chirrut asked, the frustration rung out of him like water out of a towel in that moment, forgotten for Baze’s sake.

“I should be the one asking you that,” Baze replied, always good at side stepping conversations that he was uncomfortable with. “Chirrut, what are you doing? You keep picking fights. If you want to spar, you can just ask me. You don’t have to fight everyone in the temple. You certainly do not have to piss them off and then fight them.”

The side-step brought another wave of irritation with it. “You don’t hit hard enough.” The words were flat, delivered exactly the way that he wanted them to be, but the shadow that passed over Baze’s face in response was enough to make his heart and his soul clench up inside of his body. Baze still had not started to wrap his hands, instead just holding them, thumbs moving across the skin, eyes studying the cuts and bruises. His hair was getting long, and it fell in soft waves on either side of his face. Chirrut had started to notice how beautiful Baze was about a year ago. One day he had just been Baze, and the next it had hit him like a blaster bolt how lovely his best friend was, how fine his features were especially because they belonged to him.

Baze cleared his throat, still unable to look at him, though that didn’t stop Chirrut from staring. No, he wasn’t sure anything could stop him from staring at the fall of hair, at the smooth richness of Baze’s skin, the downward turn of his lips. The pressure of his hands on Chirrut’s was small, but it was better than any of the blows he had taken or delivered in the courtyard earlier. He realized that the moments when he had felt the most real had always been when he was with Baze. It wasn’t about taking greater and harder blows at all to feel there. It was about finding the right touch. 

“Oh,” the word was a soft exhalation into the air between them, a small wish breathed into existence, but Chirrut still wasn’t sure exactly what the wish was for or how to determine if it was granted, if it even could be granted. With this information suddenly divulged to him, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it other than let Baze hold his hands and look at them like that, reverently, amazed, though Chirrut wasn’t sure what he could see there that would be amazing at all.

If Baze heard he didn’t acknowledge it. He just sat there, still cradling Chirrut’s hands, eyes on them or on the floor, but away from his, that motion that Chirrut had never been able to erase no matter how hard he tried because Baze was so good that he should never look away from anyone ever. Chirrut wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, wasn’t even sure what he wanted to happen next. This was territory that he hadn’t been in before, but it felt like nothing and everything had both changed all at once. Where had he been while this was evolving? How long had he been storming through the temple, a whirlwind of his own cluttered emotions and mind, unable to see anything unfolding before him? 

“What are you doing?” he asked, surprised by the way the words sounded leaving his mouth, throaty and low, uncertain. Was his voice shaking?

Baze still refused to look up, still just hunkered over Chirrut’s hands like he was a wall protecting them from something, curling his form over them, over Chirrut himself. “I’m wrapping your hands.” His voice had gotten so low, so small, that Chirrut had to strain to hear it even though the room seemed to have gone perfectly silent.

Chirrut lifted his hands, a visual example of how they were not wrapped. The cloth fell to the floor between them, but Baze didn’t make a move. “What are you doing?” Chirrut repeated, ducking his head slightly, trying to catch Baze’s eye, make him look at him, but it didn’t work. Whatever it was that had chased Baze inside of himself looked like it was going to require him to go in after him, which he would do, which he would always do. 

After a few minutes, Baze reached for Chirrut’s wrists to pull them back to his lap, to continue what he said he was doing, but Chirrut laced their fingers together, trying to ignore the lump that was growing in his throat with every passing second, with every slow pull of time wherein Baze wouldn’t look at him. “Baze, they’re wrapped.”

Baze huffed out that sigh, the long indignant, old one that Chirrut had never been able to figure out where he had learned it, where it had come from. It had always been there, that resigned little sigh, and it was always at the ready when they plunged into one ill-advised adventure after another. It was never a mean noise, and it never heralded any real resistance. It just existed there as much a part of Baze as his infinite kindness, as the slow smile that Chirrut loved to pull from him in whatever way he could think of, as his ears, hidden by his lovely hair but there nonetheless. 

“What are you doing?” Baze asked, finally looking up, and the expression in those eyes was enough to make Chirrut’s stomach clench and make him lose any thought of what he was going to do next in this situation. His eyes were as clear and dark as always, but there were depths there that Chirrut hadn’t fallen into before. There was an entire hidden city lurking in those eyes, and all he wanted to do was reach it and explore it for eternity, fight whatever monsters were hidden there, but he had no idea how to go about it, what the next step would be. 

Chirrut swallowed, struggling for words for an entirely new and different reason than he had ever known before. “Figuring something out. Maybe. Come here.” He tugged on their joined hands, and Baze responded by inching closer until they were knee to knee and almost forehead to forehead, though Chirrut kept his head tilted slightly away on purpose so that he could continue looking at Baze. Suddenly he was sure that he never wanted to look at anything else in the universe. Just Baze. What else could there possibly be in the entire world that was more perfect than the person sitting in front of him?

Baze licked his lips, dropped his eyes again, and looked uncomfortable, strange. Chirrut had never seen that expression on his face before, and he was unsure how to combat it, what words to say, what to do. All he knew what that he wanted to soothe Baze the way that the other had always comforted him. But Chirrut no longer had those stories he had crafted from the sand in the air, he no longer had worlds whizzing over his head. Now he had the Force and the training and a million, billion words from studying everything the masters gave them. And none of that had ever stopped the roiling, impermanent feeling that tugged at him from a place deep, deep inside, that made him feel replaceable because, after all, someone had done it before, what would stop them from doing it again? Everything he had, Baze had too so how could any of it help in this situation?

It felt like his heart was stuttering in his chest, going too fast and then slowing down to barely anything at all. All Chirrut could do was sit there, clinging to Baze’s hands and looking at his face and desperately scrabbling for what to do next before one of them bolted. He had a terrible, sinking feeling that if one of them left now, it would undo everything, it would destroy his entire world, and no matter how hard he tried, Chirrut would never be able to put it back together because he would no longer have all of the pieces. He had all the pieces in his hands now but no idea what to do with them, what structure he was supposed to be building, what the picture was supposed to look like.

What are you doing? The words rang in his head, and Chirrut didn’t have a single clue as to how to answer because he didn’t know. He just didn’t know. “Baze,” he started, and the eyes looked back up with their cities and their dungeons and their towers and their dragons, all those things he wanted to know more about. “You make me feel real.” It was silly and strange to say, words that made him feel like a child tucked into corners alone at night. But Baze had always found him there, too, hadn’t he? So maybe he would find him here.

The expression that bounded across Baze’s face was at once surprise and confusion followed by deep concern as he drew even closer, the grip of his fingers tightening. “Chirrut, how could you not be real? You’re the realest thing I know. Sometimes it seems like you’re too real, all fire and light while I just follow you. But,” one of Baze’s hands softly untangled from his and fingers traced across Chirrut’s cheek and that contact made his heart stop and thud back to life with such a jolt that he thought the world had just started, “I would follow you anywhere. You don’t even have to ask. I can’t think of being anywhere else. I don’t know if I could be anywhere else.”

“Oh,” Chirrut whispered, again struck to the point of having lost all his words. The only things he could focus on were the points of his skin that were touching Baze’s skin. “When?” he asked, not even sure what he was asking, not even sure if Baze would know what he was asking or how to respond should his friend ask for clarification.

“A year ago you beat me at sparring.” At the quirk of Chirrut’s eyebrow, he smiled. “Not an uncommon occurrence, I know, but you beat me. And you were sitting on my chest. And you were smiling. And all I could think was that I didn’t care that you had beat me, as long as you were smiling like that I didn’t care about anything else at all.”

“Why?” he asked, still stuck on small words, unable to give voice to all of it because he wasn’t completely sure what he was trying to say. He just wanted to know. Baze had known something for a year. Baze had kept something from him for an entire year. Something that might have made all the floating, irritating, disconnected moments in his mind better, and he hadn’t said a word. Chirrut couldn’t quite manage to be angry because it was Baze, but he needed to know why.

The fingers on his cheek moved down a little bit, resting at the corner of his mouth, ghosting slightly over his lips, and Baze’s gaze lingered there too before he swallowed and continued speaking, knowing what Chirrut was asking with only the smallest bit of prodding. “You belonged to the Force. No one here belongs to the Force as much as you, Chirrut. I didn’t want to take you away from it. I didn’t want to interfere. I didn’t want to ruin you.” And the way that Baze’s eyes skittered away from his face to hide the way they clouded, the storms that gathered there, broke the dam in Chirrut’s throat.

“Baze, you could never ruin me. The Force is drowning. It is waves. It is disconnecting and flailing in a space too big for me to ever fill. And I am so lost in it.” The fingers at his lips didn’t lift, if anything they seemed to hover more soundly over his mouth as he spoke, and Chirrut did his best to press the words into the skin there, callused but still soft. “I am unreal in it because it is as big as the sky, and I am just one star, dwindling.”

“Stars are suns,” Baze protested.

“Only based on proximity,” Chirrut corrected--they weren’t talking about planetary bodies anymore, were they?--moving closer until the fingers fell away and it was his lips ghosting over Baze’s lips instead as he spoke. “Will you be mine?”

Baze closed his eyes, swallowing, and Chirrut took the time to count his eyelashes because it was the only distraction from the sound of his own thundering, shuddering heart in his ears. So he counted Baze’s eyelashes and tried to memorize the feel of the almost press of their lips together and soundly pushed the Force, with all of its doubts and problems and machinations, as far away from him as he could get it. He wanted to plead for an answer, but he also didn’t want to break the silence, didn’t want to push Baze who could be so skittish, who could take so long to make up his mind about some things.

Baze’s fingers, the ones not occupied with holding Chirrut’s hand, settled at the nape of his neck, and it was almost too much, almost too warm, but he basked in the contact anyway. Suns could burn, after all, and he was going to have to get used to that. “What happens when I’m not bright enough?”

Those words spurred him to action, and Chirrut closed the distance without even being completely sure what it was he should be doing. All he knew was that he needed to get those words out of Baze’s mouth, needed to get those ideas out of his mind, storm the walls in his eyes and drive out all of the dangers that had ever made him think the thought behind those words. Chirrut kissed him, chaste, just the press and drag of lips with utterly no finesse or experience behind it. But he was rewarded with a sound pulled from Baze that seemed inhuman and incredibly pleased at the same time, so raw and perfect that it drug talons up Chirrut’s spine and made his lungs ache for it. So he kissed him again and threaded his free hand into Baze’s hair to keep him close. Real, real, real. Chirrut had never felt more real than at that moment even if he was positive he was doing everything wrong it didn’t matter. 

When he broke away, panting, the first thing he did was find Baze’s eyes, searched to see what was hiding there. “You could never not be bright enough.” And his voice cracked and strained and seemed very much unlike his voice altogether, but it must have been enough even if it wasn’t pretty because Baze’s eyes were full of a different kind of ocean that fell down his cheeks like warm Jedhan rain when he blinked and into the corners of his lips, upturned in that slow, blazing smile that Chirrut would do anything to see. 

That was more than enough to stop the shouting in his mind, to calm him down. Just the press of Baze’s lips against his and the shy touches, each one more fire after another combined with the words, the feeling that something had changed without breaking open. If anything, the change had made things that much better, that much more true and real. It was like Chirrut said, it was always Baze making him feel real, it was always Baze reaching out across the void of the Force to bring him back from wherever it wanted to take him, even in the days before either of them truly knew or understood what was happening. 

As much as Chirrut might have wished that revelation would be the end of his doubts and his irritation at his circumstances, it wasn’t. It only got worse before it got better. Having Baze helped, but it wasn’t an immediate cure. He could find himself in the other’s touch, but that alone wouldn’t teach him how to manage the rest of it. That was still something that he needed to work on for himself.

Meditation was supposed to ground them. That was what the masters said, and as such, Chirrut had a hard time understanding why he would sometimes feel so unsettled when attempting it. Baze never seemed to have problems, and Chirrut envied him the ability to just slide away on the sea of the Force, give himself up to whatever existed beyond. Chirrut didn’t know why it seemed to fight him with insistent, gnashing teeth. Or, maybe, he was the one fighting, no longer as willing to give himself over to the tides and twists and the inability to be in control of where the path might take him. Scared to see what it wanted him to because there was that darkness that lingered in the pit of his stomach, the dread of it being something he didn’t want to see, the scent of blood in the air. He had learned that the Force was not kind, and even if Baze was a beacon, a way home, Chirrut worried about drifting further than the other man could reach.

What used to be simple, what used to be fun, when he was younger had started to become harder as the years passed. By the time he was nineteen, he was aggravated to the point of pacing the halls with it, palms roughly slapping against the stones as he walked, Baze trailing along in his wake, muttering prayers lightly. And Chirrut loved him, loved every bit of him from the feet, which he had taught him how to place when they sparred, to the big ears standing out on the sides of his head, which he had kicked a boy into the dirt over and started their friendship all those years ago, but there were some days when it was hard to listen to Baze go through his thousandth recitation of their manta in his good boy voice. There were days when Chirrut just wanted to see Baze stumble and fall down.

It was low and petty of him. It was small. It was not noble in any sense of the word, either the definition the masters used or the one he had created for himself, years ago. Each slap of his fingers against the stone was making him more irritated rather than less. When Baze’s hand settled on his shoulder, he grabbed the wrist tight, first instinct to treat the contact as a preamble to a spar, but his fingers immediately loosened as he recognized that this was just Baze. Baze who was sparse with words and physical intimacy both when they were in public places, but who also knew enough to see when Chirrut was coming undone at the seams, when the feel of unrealness was too heavy on his skin.

“It’s okay,” Baze said, fingers pressing into his shoulder. “C’mon.” He steered them through the halls, deftly avoiding areas that might be full of people who would want to talk to them, who would want to stop them. 

As a child, Chirrut had once mapped out the temples, save for the kyber cave which he was still not allowed in, and that information seemed to have passed from him to Baze the moment the other set foot on the grounds without either of them understanding it or even willing it to happen. But that was the only reason he could think of that Baze had always known how to find him as well as the best paths to take in order to avoid being seen, stopped, bothered. As a child, of course, Chrrut had not known how valuable dark corners would prove to be in the rest of his life, how they would offer the chance for stolen moments of time, kisses and awkward fumblings, the press of heated skin and whispered words. As the years had passed, they had discovered more nooks and crannies, expanded their knowledge of secret corners together.

This was not a corner instance, though, and Chirrut realized that as Baze maneuvered them quickly to their quarters, pushing him gently inside and then locking the door. Chirrut was aware of Baze leaning against the door, keeping his distance, while he filled the room with a flurry of movements, kicks, punches. He couldn’t scream. There was nowhere in the temple that he could scream, not the way that he wanted to, howling to the sky until his throat gave out and his knees gave out and the frustration would be washed off of him like a coating of dirt to leave him pristine and solid underneath it. Once the edge of it, the tedious prickling at his skin like the points of a thousand daggers, receded enough that he could catch a breath, Chirrut settled his hands on top of his head and then walked into the broad expanse of Baze’s chest.

Baze was a wall, Baze was a mountain, Baze was the type of thick, tall tree that they had seen mentioned in books about other planets and moons. Baze was real, and Baze could impart realness to him. He leaned his head against him, the familiar planes of muscle, and listened to the air in his lungs, the beat of his heart. Dimly, faintly, beneath the rest of it, Chirrut thought he could pick out the whooshing of Baze’s blood through his veins and arteries, the tiny sounds of his cells as they worked, purposefully, perfectly. Losing himself to focusing on Baze brought a serenity that losing himself to the Force never had.

Fingers settled at the nape of his neck, and they were cold so he knew that he was overwrought, overwhelmed, because Baze was always warm. If he had worked himself up enough for the touch of those fingers to be cold, then the thread of his seams was snapping. Dimly, Chirrut became aware of Baze’s voice, of the singing, of the vibrations spilling through the body he was leaning into. His voice had improved over the years, deepened as he matured, turned into something low and rumbly that made Chirrut’s skin feel tight and hot when he heard it. It shot sparks up his spine and down into his groin. Baze had never learned new songs, though, so he just sang the ones from their youth, the ones that Chirrut had no memories to associate with except for Baze, but even all the moments that Baze had given to him faded out, paltry in the light, when the other man began to sing.

The fingers shifted upwards into his hair, the touch heavy, and Chirrut’s breathing was still fast, but the reason for that was rapidly shifting to something other than ragged, thick irritation at the entire world around him. It was the first thrums of desire, of want. Those were hard to fight when Baze was this close and his voice was reverberating its slow way into his body. Chirrut shifted enough to bring his arms down so that they were no longer over his face, so he could plant his hands on Baze’s chest, both of them folded over his heart. 

“You’re running away from it again, Chirrut,” Baze said, cutting the song off in the middle, which earned him a throaty sound of protest. 

There was the scent of blood in his nostrils again, and Chirrut didn’t understand why the Force persisted with that kind of imagery, why it brought that to him. Kindness was all he had ever wanted from it. Warm, open, inviting arms into the galaxy. That wasn’t what the Force was, wasn’t how the Force worked. The Force just brought him whatever it wanted to even when it hurt, maybe especially when it hurt, and expected him to receive it gladly. No, the only person who brought him kindness in any kind of predictable, never faltering manner was Baze. 

“It has you, Chirrut. It’s not going to let you go. All your fighting only makes you unhappy.” The rest was left unspoken, but Chirrut knew it already. His unhappiness made Baze unhappy because it hurt him to see Chirrut in distress, and it hurt him to watch Chirrut’s endless battle. 

Chirrut didn’t hate when Baze was right, but he did still find it frustrating that Baze, who would have surrendered the man he loved to the Force if that was what Chirrut had wanted, couldn’t at least be selfish enough to take his side in this argument. The Force inundated him, it wrapped around his limbs like a climbing vine, but it was Baze who had always believed in it more despite the fact that it never seemed to reward him for that faith at all. “I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Chirrut said, his hands sliding over Baze’s chest to his arms, to pin them against the door on either side of him, bringing his head up to look at Baze, dare him, before leaning in to press a kiss against his neck, dragging his teeth over his skin.

Baze’s chuckle split into a moan when Chirrut applied his teeth to the kiss, but he did not struggle from the hold. “Chirrut,” he started, voice already a rasp.

“Shut up,” Chirrut said, tilting his head up to look at Baze because he always loved watching the impact his words could have on the other. “Shut up, and make me real again.” It was received just as well as he had hoped, with Baze squeezing his eyes shut like the words were red hot against his skin and then twisting out of the feeble hold Chittut had on his arms to reverse their positions.

Once Baze had Chirrut pressed to the door, he bent to kiss him roughly, biting at his lower lip. This part of their relationship was only a few years old, but that was long enough for them to have learned what the other wanted, needed. It helped that he and Baze had already been so close. Making that last little crease, folding the last part into place, like a paper bird, had come so naturally that sometimes it was hard for Chirrut to recall a time when they didn’t know how to fit perfectly together like this. 

Initially Baze had been a little stubborn in regards to just dropping issues that came up in favor of kisses and touching and physical intimacy when Chirrut evoked the need to feel real, but he had come around to it. In the end, Chirrut had never known Baze to deny him anything even if he knew he should. Baze had come to appreciate just how much Chirrut needed the grounding, even if he always wanted to attempt to get through with words first. Chirrut pretended to mind a lot more than he did. If the other man had folded easily without trying to take care of him first, he wouldn’t be the man he had fallen in love with, after all. 

Chirrut wormed one of his arms free to snake up into Baze’s hair, grown even longer now and filled with braids and hope and paper birds sometimes when Baze was in a particularly patient mood, to tug insistently at the strands. Baze huffed in pleasure against his mouth, and Chirrut took the momentary lapse in concentration to gain the upper hand. Baze might have been taller and broader, but he was kinder, gentle, always concerned about accidentally hurting everyone. Chirrut was brasher and stronger and faster. It wasn’t a contest, really. He was going to win every time.

Getting his hands between them, he used the leverage he had against the door to push Baze soundly, making the other man step backward, the momentum carrying him until the back of his legs hit the bed and down he went. Just like Chirrut had planned. Baze was laughing. It was a ploy that Chirrut used often because it was easy to set up, and he knew that they both enjoyed the power play of Baze flat out on his back while Chirrut strutted toward him, discarding bits of clothing the entire way. Baze folded his hands behind his head, silent, gaze unwavering but that slow smile spreading across his features in the same sweet way that the sun rose. On another day, at a softer time, Chirrut might have stopped just to bask in the warmth, but he was not in the mood for that now. 

Running his tongue over his teeth, making sure to pull his lips back so that Baze could watch that as well, he undid the fastenings on his clothing, letting the robes and bits of cloth flutter to the ground as he advanced. It was a small room, but they had learned to make do with what they had so Chirrut knew how fast to move, how to properly saunter so as not to run out of space before he had run out of clothing, timing it perfectly so that he arrived, naked, half hard, the moment he stopped in front of where Baze lay, stretched out and lazy as though he didn’t have a care in the world, as though his lover was not right there, within reach and completely accessible. 

“Lazy,” Chirrut teased, hands settled on his hips in order to more fully put everything on display, shaking his head at Baze as though he had really expected better. 

“You complain when I watch. You complain when I don’t watch,” Baze huffed out good-naturedly, sitting up, hands reaching for Chirrut, who batted them away as though still offended. “I’m not sure what you want anymore, you picky fool.” 

All of it had been a surprise to Chirrut, though a completely pleasant one, but the thing that was the best was how quickly Baze got comfortable with the banter and the teasing, the verbal foreplay. The hesitancy that used to exist within him, that walled up castle, had begun a steady evaporation the moment Chirrut kissed him, eventually just falling away altogether. By the time Chirrut had caught his hand one night, unbidden, with no other preamble or warning, and told him that he loved him, Baze seemed to have settled into himself altogether. It was almost as if part of him had been hiding, so scared of losing Chirrut to the Force, so unwilling to say anything that might result in coming between Chirrut and the Force, and now that he recognized that it was not one or the other, he had let it blossom. He had become that sun that Chirrut asked him to be. Though, as Baze liked to tease, only based on proximity, echoing Chirrut’s own words from that first day they had crashed into each other fully.

Chirrut reached his hands out to run them into Baze’s hair, tucking it behind his ears so that he could see them properly, run his fingers over the tips and down to pull on the lobes. He preferred Baze’s hair long even if it did hide the ears that had brought them together in the first place. Baze’s hair was thick and heavy, softer than it should have been, and it fell in gentle waves. He routinely spent hours running his fingers through it, tending it, petting it, while Baze was meditating. It helped more than reaching for the Force. It was warmer and better because it was Baze. “Just you,” he said finally, lips twisting into a bit of a pout as he tilted his head and looked admiringly at his lover who was beginning to turn red at the tips of his ears and across his cheeks. 

Baze encircled his wrists with his fingers, which were so long it seemed like they could have wrapped around them two times over. His thumbs pressed gently against Chirrut’s pulse point to feel the truth of his heart lingering under the skin. It never mattered how insistent and impatient Chirrut was when they started. A few of Baze’s lingering touches always slowed him down, sweetened him up. There was something about Baze that was too good to rush. They had tried. Force, they had tried, but even what were supposed to be quick trysts turned into hours of slow, adoring worship and then they were late for whatever they were supposed to be doing anyway. 

“Just you,” he repeated, leaning closer so that they were nose to nose. That close Baze’s eyes were a city of lights, a reflecting pool, though the version of himself that Chirrut found there was always greater and better than anything he could be, but that didn’t mean he was going to stop trying with every day that passed. “Just you out of these clothes,” he continued, mock indignation heavy and thick, the teasing as light as if they were out in the courtyard sparring instead of head over heels in the kind of giddy love that Chirrut had never imagined possible, had never even taken a second to consider.

The laughter was low and slow, a rumbling like an earthquake. The hands fell from his wrists and cradled Chirrut’s face in a lazy, honeyed motion. “Patience, love.” 

The little terms of endearment that Baze liked to use, that he could pepper the air with when they were alone as easily as he could lay kisses across Chirrut’s flesh, never failed to send a shudder through him. Maybe it was because Baze had so often been the one speaking the truth throughout their lives. Chirrut had been the one telling stories, tall tales that they could escape into. But it was Baze who brought true things, memories, the scents of the market, songs. Nothing he said ever seemed to have been fabricated. 

“Might as well ask me to move our moon through the sky. Have you seen yourself lately?” He turned his head so he could press a kiss into Baze’s palm, felt the shiver that went through him at the contact. “It’s a good thing I know how to best everyone in the temple or I might have competition.” When he bit gently at the skin on the edge of Baze’s hand, the man groaned. The sound tingled right through his body to his erection, which was getting harder by the moment. 

Baze moved his hands quickly, catching Chirrut’s hips and pressed his fingers lightly into the muscle. “Oh, it has nothing to do with that. It’s just that everyone knows they cannot hold a candle to you. You eclipse everyone else that there has ever been.”

The words made Chirrut’s heart swell even as he settled a hand on Baze’s still clothed chest and forced him back down onto the bed, clambering up to straddle him. Baze made a noise of protest when Chirrut pressed his hips against him, but Chirrut didn’t feel even a little sympathy. Baze was the one who hadn’t removed his clothing. With Baze’s hungry hands still settled on his hips, Chirrut pressed kisses into his neck, bumping his head against Baze’s chin to indicate that he wanted more access. Baze gave it without protest. 

“You should have been a poet,” he whispered into Baze’s warm, glowing skin, getting the words out between kisses, not even positive that Baze would hear him over the hitched, harsh little breaths that Chirrut was enjoying pulling from him. “Would have suited you better. Then you could write pretty verses about me all day long and not worry about me showing you up when we spar.”

Baze shook his head, hands drifting up Chirrut’s back, across the expanse of his abdomen. “A waste,” he gruffed. “My muse and my audience are the same. My words aren’t for anyone else, Chirrut.” Chirrut sucked at his neck, which turned the utterance of his name into something patently, blisteringly obscene, the type of sound that never failed to raise goose-flesh across his body. 

Baze had always smelled like the temple, they all did, incense and laundered robes, with the scent of Jedha, sand and sadness, beneath it. It was pleasant and known, comforting. The taste of Baze’s skin, the lingering trace of it on his tongue, was completely different. It was salt and citrus, parchment, and something under all of that, something that burned and flared as bright as any sun. As the sun the Baze had become for him without ever knowing, without ever trying, just lingering there, protective and illuminating, a place to come home to.

Chirrut was still going to war with the Force. He couldn’t see that stopping anytime soon. Maybe one day he would lay aside that burden, stop fighting it so hard, and maybe one day it would stop tugging him so far away into an endless spiral of things he didn’t want to know. But even if they managed to get along, even if he stopped feeling angry at it, he was never going to get tired of surfacing from its tide to find Baze there, waiting for him. Baze, large as a mountain. Baze with his big hands and slow smiles and songs of comfort, songs of joy. Chirrut was real in his touch, in his taste, in his love. Chirrut was real and wanted and not replaceable. To Baze. And that was enough, wasn’t it? That was more than enough for him to continue, to face the dragon in the dark of the kyber caves, the one built from self-doubt and fear and anger and the worry of a child left behind by people he didn’t remember. 

Baze stuttered his name out again as Chirrut kissed him. And that night felt like all nights, all that had come before and all of the ones that would come in the future. 

There are many futures, Chirrut knows. There is the one that he inhabits where Baze sings, bright as any star in the sky, bright as any sun, to the initiates who wake from nightmares. And there are the futures that are far worse, the ones where the air is inescapably tinged with blood and blaster fire. When he finally stopped fighting the Force, this is what it showed him. How futures run like pieces of bright string stretched across a wall, overlapping in some places, tangled together, or eons apart, never touching. Chirrut has walked through that map, viewing futures, seeing possibilities. The Force, when he finally stopped asking it to be kind, showed how wise it was, how it had known some things all along. 

Like how to bless him with the same hand it used to curse him.

In the dark, he hears that Baze has stopped singing, having rocked the last young initiate back to sleep, having chased all of their nightmares away. Baze is not a night guardian, not officially. He does not roam the halls of the temple guarding the rooms, guarding their lives. No, he roams the halls of the dreams of the children, guarding them as steadfastly as he has ever guarded Chirrut over the years.

When he pads back to their bed, tread heavy as befits a mountain, Chirrut pulls the blanket close, pretending to be asleep, which brings that sigh forth, the old man sigh, the one whose origin he never learned. The sigh makes him open his eyes, turn his head toward where Baze sits even though he can no longer see him, these days. “Done fighting monsters under the bed?” he asks, bringing a hand up that Baze catches easily. Chirrut’s memory is very keen. He can recollect, in perfect detail, the dark pools of Baze’s eyes, the figure of himself that they reflect back, a man he hopes he has very nearly become. 

“You tell me, love,” Baze says, twining their fingers together. Middle of the night Baze is always the softest Baze, the one half asleep whose defenses have all been blown away by the Jedhan winds. “Any battles you want to ask me to win?”

Chirrut laughs at that, and Baze joins in. The sound is like a paper bird to Chirrut, soaring over their heads and out a high window, escaping peacefully into the night. “Leave the fighting to me,” he teases, pokes his other hand into the slight layer of fat that sits across Baze’s abdomen. 

“Rude,” Baze huffs, still laugh bright, brings his head down to press their foreheads together, and Chirrut is enclosed by the soft curtains of his lover’s hair. “You never complain when I pin you.”

He raises his free hand to settle on Baze’s face, traces the lines that have been etched there by life, by sadness, by love. Each one is connected to something in the past. Each one belongs to him as much as it does to Baze. It is not a possessive thought. Baze gave himself over many years ago, before Chirrut even understood what a gift it was. “Make me real,” he says, smiles, and feels more laughter rumble through the other man as he peels the covers back and kisses him.

The word that leaves his lips, that is breathed from one mouth to another, passed from tongue to tongue, is so quiet, so quickly swallowed that Chirrut wonders whether he heard it at all or whether it is is just a bright brush through the Force. The method of communication does not really matter, though, just the word. “Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come find me on [Tumblr](http://sarkastically.tumblr.com/).


End file.
